


when the sunflowers bleed

by Matloc



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Akashi might be modeled after Asriel, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Cute, Don't worry, Fluff, Inspired By Undertale, M/M, could be seen as a prequel to Undertale in fact, herbalist!Kuroko, horns!AKashi, just a little, kuroko just really loves his grandma, stay determined, warnings for like 1 line of gore, yep you read the tags right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:24:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5529350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matloc/pseuds/Matloc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having lived alone in his forest for centuries, Akashi one day finds a friend, and perhaps more, in Kuroko.</p><blockquote>
  <p>“Akashi-kun, you hurled a <em>decapitated boar</em> at Aomine-kun?”</p>
  <p>“Is that not how you humans greet each other?”</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	when the sunflowers bleed

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: "what do you think of an au where akashi is a mythical beast that everyone fears, while kuroko is a herbalist. they meet in a forest while kuroko is picking herbs."
> 
> thanks for the prompt, anon! if any of u guise have played undertale then you know what to expect sorry not sorry

_“Now be quiet and listen. Deep in the woods lives a ferocious beast. One whose very name strikes fear into the hearts of men. Much of it remains unknown however, for no man who has ventured into these woods has ever returned ali—”_

“Kise-kun, please don’t go killing off Aomine-kun to suit your own needs,” interrupts Kuroko, adjusting the satchels on his belt. “You are not very good at telling stories. I have already heard all of this, so could you please let me go?”

A light grunt escapes his lips when the golden-haired boy grabs him by the shoulders. “But Kurokocchi! You don’t understand!”

“Tetsu,” chimes in a rougher voice. “You don’t get it ‘cuz you’re not from ‘round here. That guy is bad news.” Aomine insists, his tall form hunched over a chopped tree trunk and face wearing a stern glare.

Kuroko turns to meet his stare head on, making clear his resoluteness. “I appreciate your concern, you two, but I doubt such a great being would have enough free time to appear before some herbalist. Like I said before, I do not intend to head too far into the woods, as I’ll be merely looking for some flowers.” He patiently repeats himself for the last time, already rising to his feet.

It doesn’t take much longer for the carpenter to concede that he won’t be winning this battle. He sighs, running a hand through his short indigo hair. “Fine—”

“Aominecchi!”

“—I’ll give you till sunset. If you don’t come back by then, this idiot,” he points to Kise, continuing before the boy’s loud mouth could prepare another retort. “And I are gonna come drag you back to the village by force.”

Kuroko’s brow crinkles slightly. “It is already past noon.” Collecting materials takes a considerable amount of time. It is one aspect of the trade no herbalist would claim gets easier with experience.

His dark-skinned friend simply offers him a smirk. “Then you better get to work now.”

A half-hearted glare is thrown his way, before it relaxes into a smile when the shorter boy sees Kise’s face wrought with worry. Fists clenching, a lip quivering as he tries hard to refrain from stopping the blue-haired boy in his tracks.

Kuroko turns in the direction of the forest, looking back over his shoulder with mirth twinkling in his eye. “Yes, I promise. I’ll be back soon.”

-

They say the blood of the sunflower is rare despite the plants dotting the entire world with their large golden heads. Most medicinal textbooks do not go into much detail, cramming a few speculations into one tiny paragraph printed at the bottom, which can be conveniently skipped over.

The serum prepared by it is said to only cure a mostly unknown disease, caused by the sting of a very rare variety of wasps. Not many people sharing Kuroko’s line of work would even fully confirm its existence, as there simply haven’t been enough cases to arouse public questions, let alone warrant any kind of research.

There is only Kuroko, walking down an untraveled road with urgency etched into every footprint. He cannot stop until he develops a cure for his grandmother while she is resting her swollen neck on some hospice bed. Although reliable sources, including Kuroko’s own repository of knowledge, say there is no fear of death, the image of her skin stretched into a sickening black around the wasp sting sticks fresh in his mind as he ducks under a branch, scanning the place for any hint of yellow peeking through the shrubbery.

An hour comes to pass before Kuroko finds something, travelling far deeper into the lush thickets than planned. He finally reaches a clearing, perhaps the heart of the forest if the villagers are correct.

Sunlight floods the area, draping its warmth over Kuroko as he hops out of a bush. He brushes off some baby leaves sticking to his cotton pants, all the while taking in the new sounds of birds singing in coquettish tones, coloring the air with dulcet hymns of love. A tiny smile plays on his lips as he glances around, stretching wide when his blue eyes stop at the sight he’s been looking for all along.

Crowding around a dead tree, with yellow-maned heads, are a fresh batch of sunflowers gazing proudly at the sun. The golden flower of Teikou, standing tall and bright, and the only species known to produce the blood of the sunflower.

His vision drowns in beautiful gold as he steps closer to the flowerbed, breathing in their lovely scent, only tempered by the canopy of trees surrounding the clearing.

Kuroko caresses the bright rings of petals of one sunflower reaching up to his waist, relishing in the softness. He doesn’t even notice his eyes have fallen closed until an unfamiliar voice snaps him out of his reverie:

“I never took your people to be ones for stealing from another’s property.”

The blue-haired boy immediately jerks away. “Forgive me. Are you the one who raised these flo—…” He loses tongue when the figure emerges from behind the tree, tilting a scarlet-nested head at Kuroko.

His eyes instantly zoom in on the horns sprouting a good few inches from the person’s hair, glistening sharp and white like they’re carved out of the same expanse of marble the village deities are made of.

He stands slightly taller than Kuroko, draped in a thick set of robes, looking at him with a knowing smile on his face. “Hello, human.” He greets, his voice reminding Kuroko of the sweet lull from the birds’ singing, which have oddly fallen quiet, along with the rest of the critters inhabiting these woods. “Welcome to my forest.”

The boy bows his head in reply. “Nice to meet you, I am Kuroko Tetsuya.”

“I am impressed; most tend to forget their manners upon first sight.”

Kuroko’s eyes jump again to the tips of the curved horns, looking very pointy and threatening. “Forgive my rudeness but I might have a guess as to why.” That draws a tiny laugh out of the other, the light sound seemingly catching the wind to echo through evergreen depths.

Almost as if the forest breathes with him.

“I do not go by any name… although I was once called Akashi Seijuurou.”

Amidst a bed of golden flowers swaying gently in the breeze, Kuroko encounters the very creature from the fables in all its deceptively human glory.

-

Sunlight pours through Kuroko’s eyelids from where he’s sitting, back rested against the thin trunk of a tree bereft of leaves, and any hope for shade, he supposes, as he squints up at a naked branch. Akashi flanks his right, his dark robes brushing against the expanse of skin peeking through Kuroko’s sleeve.

The forest observes the two through fractured glimpses amidst the bevy of sunflowers, tall green stems nicely camouflaging their view from the rest of the world. It certainly explains why Kuroko had failed to notice Akashi at first.

“I see. That is why you seek the blood of the golden flower.” Akashi concludes with a nod once Kuroko finishes telling his story. Ivory horns shine almost metallic with each subtle shake of his head.

Kuroko hums, playing with a blade of grass. “I wasn’t expecting to find someone like Akashi-kun here.”

“I wasn’t expecting you either,” replies the other with a dash of humor brimming in his scarlet eyes. “You are a curious thing, Kuroko. I couldn’t sense your presence at all when you entered my forest. Not until you touched these flowers.” He pokes at a brown maw in front of him, the petals around it shaking as the flower momentarily bobs back and forth.

“Are they… connected to you?”

Akashi throws him a mysterious look, craning a neck too thin for the burden of such big horns. Red eyes study him for a moment while Kuroko waits for an answer, measuring the seconds with the silence stretched taut between them. The next second Akashi flicks his gaze back to the flowers. “I wonder,” he murmurs more to himself.

Within this short span of time Kuroko has grown fond of observing Akashi. The gears in Kuroko’s mind pausing to spin backwards when a clawed hand flirts with a golden crown swaying in front of them, when Akashi’s gaze softens with the colors of the sun spilling on the flowers. “You are very different from what the rumors said,” Kuroko blurts out.

Akashi raises a fine brow. “Oh? Pray tell what sort of opinion your people share about me?”

“That you are a ‘rampaging psychotic monster’, according to Aomine-kun.”

The redhead’s eyes light up in recognition, and he sits up straighter, fostering a renewed interest in their conversation. “Are you perhaps talking about the human who shrieked and chucked his firewood at me when I made myself visible to him?”

Kuroko has to cough back a laugh, never hearing this particular version of the story before.

“I did find it odd,” mentions Akashi with a furrowed brow. “He seemed very offended by my offering, for someone of his built.”

“Offering?”

“Why yes, I handed him the savory remains of a boar as a welcoming gesture, in hopes that he would find it to his stomach’s liking.” He strokes his chin in thought. “…Perhaps he was a herbivore.”

Kuroko’s train of thought ceases up, jammed by Aomine’s hysterical words of warning from a few days ago. He can’t tell if this revelation has let things fall into place or just brought upon a new disaster of embarrassing proportions.

He narrows his eyes at the other, a headache incoming. “Akashi-kun, you hurled a _decapitated boar_ at Aomine-kun?”

“Is that not how you humans greet each other?”

Kuroko answers with a blank face.

“It was to my knowledge that it is an important custom to offer food to any guests who are visiting your house.” Akashi explains, drawing a heavy sigh out of his blue-haired companion.

“Yes but there are less savagely ways to implement such customs.” Kuroko responds, squinting at midday skies that are busy shifting colors as the sun begins its slow descent. He takes that as his cue to get going, rising to his feet as he speaks. “Perhaps next time I could teach you about humans.”

There’s a warm hand coiling around his wrist, and suddenly he has to brace himself against the dilapidated tree as he finds himself looming over Akashi’s seated form. If the redhead tugs any harder Kuroko would have to deal with a whole another level of red-faced awkwardness by landing straight in Akashi’s lap.

“Next time? You’ll come again?” Akashi looks up at him with bright eyes. Kuroko’s body casts a shadow over the other, making those eyes sparkle like a chunk of the sun might have once gotten lost in them. It was such a careless thing to say, slipping out of his mouth on pure accident, but the starstruck look on Akashi’s face makes his heart turn soft.

It has Kuroko entertaining the idea of being alone for a time perhaps too long to be measured in years, with only woodland critters and a field of sun-worshipping flowers to keep him company. A life untouched by the age old wisdom of his grandmother, or the smiles of recovering patients, or the laughter of friends.

Akashi’s smile persists, morphing to an almost childlike gleam that Kuroko’s instantly learning he is very weak against. “I will let you have some of my flowers if you promise to return.”

Well then.

That’s a fair trade, he thinks.

-

The serum does not work.

Rather, Kuroko realizes his error only after extracting it. As someone who’s faced a multitude of failures in his life, the sting of disappointment always hurts like reopening old wounds with a rusted scalpel. But he faces them with a strong attitude, an unwavering resolve that burns brightest in the dark as he crushes another flower with his pestle. The night invites a chill through an open window, yet this must be the nth time he’s wiping off a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek with the back of his hand.

He’s been at it for hours, churning petals with a kind of dedication that stems from resentment. Towards the flowers for not working as they should have, as he _hoped_ for—but mostly towards himself, for smiling proudly at his grandmother with the promise of a cure finally in his hands. For making her eyes light up in unbridled joy, despite the fact that she couldn’t feel her tongue anymore. For watching the same light fade when it sinks in two days later that Kuroko’s medicine has failed.

Yet another instance of what Kuroko calls taking his grandmother’s kindness for granted. Because she still smiled at him in the end, through the pain flaming around her neck, through the numbness locking up her jaw. How much it must hurt for her to smile—a subtle tilt of cracked lips is all she can manage—enough for Kuroko to believe he does not deserve it.

Not until he finds a real cure for it.

In an overhead lamp a fire flickers hesitantly, muted by oblong tendrils of night that extend to engulf even the light from the stars. Kuroko’s skin feels sticky with oil; he can taste it in his mouth by the time he gets to the last flower. He grounds it with tired hands, a shock of pain running through his wrists with each twist of the pestle. It feels so heavy in his hand now that he’s had to pick it off the table or the ground one too many times.

It’s always the tiny mistakes that keep adding up like boulders on your back when you’re setting yourself up for defeat.

That’s exactly the word that echoes in his ears when he dips the paste into a test tube and waits for it to change colors. Not even a trick of the light offers to salvage his ultimately shattered morale as the tube stays transparent with the brown paste collecting at the bottom like it—every effort he took—is just dirt.

He’s reaching for another flower on reflex, but there’s only the cold surface of a cutting board stained with useless remains of a sunflower to communicate his pathetic lack of progress. There’s no hope for a finish line when he can’t even take a step forward.

He uses the last of his strength to throw out the container with the paste, along with the rest of his wasted efforts.

-

A bright morning rolls in to wash away the stains of failure from last night, rekindling a new fire that has Kuroko leaping out of bed earlier than usual. It is a fortunate thing to have friends who like to sleep in late, landing Kuroko an easy opportunity to sneak into Akashi’s forest without a soul noticing him.

The woods come to life with the sound of birds singing about, vermillion-feathered lovers calling out to each other in little chirrups. Leaves rustle happily with the wind as it comes down to caress the boy’s pale cheeks, and momentarily drives away the harshness of a summer in its waking throes.

If there is an upside to collecting herbs, surely it must be this.

Or perhaps Kuroko could append his thoughts with a more fascinating prospect. One that presents itself in the form of finding a mythical creature fast asleep behind a little field of sunflowers.

On silent feet, the boy approaches Akashi. He’s a silent spectacle leant against a leafless tree, head lolling downward, moving with his chest as he breathes deeply. Exotic contours of his face softened by sleep, as if he doesn’t look impeccable already when he’s awake. Kuroko finds himself wanting to brush the hair out of his eyes, wanting to know how it would feel to have his fingers buried in that glossy red, always so tempting after a breeze has leafed through it.

He almost gives in to the urge when the horns catch his eye. Sitting tall on his head with sharp tips curved backwards, they could make up the contours of an ivory crown if someone laid in pearls along the grooves. He can imagine himself running his hands along them, trying to imbue their texture into his flesh like a century’s worth of history has been written into them.

“You’re early.”

Kuroko flinches in surprise, and as he rears back it occurs to him the frustrating number of times this being has caught him off-guard. Reminding him not all things that act and look human have to necessarily be, in all overlapping respects, veritably _human_.

“The flowers did not work, Akashi-kun.” Kuroko skips his greetings, last night’s disappointment seeping liquid iron into his bones.

Akashi’s observing him with warm eyes, reminding Kuroko of all the frigid days he would spend curled up next to a fire. A gentle kind of warmth not bestowed by summer days.

Lips loosening into a kind smile, Akashi pats the ground next to him. Kuroko’s legs listen without him even noticing until his hands are nestled in the grass. It wouldn’t come as a surprise if beasts knew how to bewitch people, like Akashi who might as well be casting a spell every time he speaks. “Sleep, Kuroko.”

But the shorter boy shakes his head ardently enough for his bangs to fall over his eyes. “No, I need to—“

“You do not look like you caught any sleep last night. Rest now.”

He thinks it’s fatigue catching up to him when his eyelids suddenly grow heavy, that it must be a trick of the mind when the last thing he sees is Akashi’s eyes flashing gold for the briefest of moments before he’s pulled down into dreams.

-

At first he feels like he’s walking in the sky, and he’d be lying if he said he has never dreamt of living the rest of his days as nothing more than a cloud floating by. For a vulnerable moment he imagines what it’d be like living without the weight of the past few days dragging him down.

For a moment, he wonders what it would be like without his sickly grandmother around.

Consciousness grabs Kuroko just then and he jolts up, uprooting the sunflowers twined around his fingers by the cruelest of accidents. He has no time to loathe himself for his haze-filtered musings, because his ears are ringing painfully with the sound of flower stems being brutally ripped out of the ground, making him cringe like the hurt is something horribly palpable, like it is anger personified slicing up his flesh.

His head immediately snaps towards Akashi, whose knees are barely brushing the edge of the flowerbed. He’s leaning in so close the urge to jump away zaps Kuroko’s joints.

But Kuroko doesn’t move an inch, not wanting to cause any more damage. “I’m so sorry, Akashi-kun. I—”

His voice trembles with guilt, much heavier, darker than just the mangled chunks of someone’s beloved creations wilting inside his fists. Thoughts of his grandmother from moments ago, which he let escape from a languid mind—a mind without worry, like he has any _right_ —reel back to dig into his skull, like an executioner’s righteous blade falling down upon Kuroko.

He is certain he’d deserve that, for daring to entertain such terrible thoughts while his bedridden grandmother patiently waits for his return. With a proper cure. One he’s already failed once in bringing to her.

“I—A-Akashi-kun, I don’t know how to fix—” His throat starts to crack, every apology working through him like a knife fashioned out of tattered emotions.

There’s a hand on his arm, dragging him to his feet and out of the flowerbed.

“Kuroko,” Akashi calls out in a calming tone, but the shorter boy doesn’t even have the courage to look at what’s probably left of the flowers right now. When half of them are uprooted, half trampled pitifully under his sleeping weight.

Akashi’s gripping him by the shoulders now, whirling him around. “It is alright; watch.”

And truly Kuroko can do nothing _but_ watch, rendered speechless by the sight of dead flowers lazily rising up, sprouting back to life. Golden petals shine brilliantly as they spring open from the buds, effortlessly going back to grinning at the sun again.

“Your grandmother too shall rise in full health again,” Akashi says right into his ear. And just this once, Kuroko believes wholeheartedly not just in the powers Akashi might possess but the certainty that never seizes from his voice, the comforting strength in his grip.

And perhaps, the weightless sensation in Kuroko’s own heart.

-

Back at the healer’s, Kuroko sits on the edge of a stool, worrying his lip between his teeth. Never once does he take his eyes off his grandmother’s sleeping form.

The medicine should be taking effect soon; Akashi promised it would when he fetched a small bottle from his sleeve, handing it to Kuroko along with instructions to administer the salve around the wasp sting.

She will wake up next morning without pain, he assured Kuroko, who’d hung on to his every word, clutching the bottle to his chest like a glass lifeline.

Which is why Kuroko spends the rest of day keeping watch over his grandmother. Watches her sleep with her neck wrapped in a cocoon of bandages, all the way up to the lower half of her face. Maybe he tosses a glance or two outside the window. Looks at the colors of sunset, curling into the horizon. A name would whip past clouded pathways of his mind, for a bare, fleeting moment.

Then his vision refocuses onto a small bed, and the withered figure sleeping peacefully inside it.

When Kuroko nods off into a night laid in dreams, his cerulean eyes do not blink open until after the first rays of sunshine have scissored through clouds. He wakes up to the sun beaming on his face, with a hollow heart that doesn’t know what to expect.

But his grandmother’s cheerful “Good morning!” makes him forget all about the ache in the back of his neck.

-

Only after insisting she rest some more does Kuroko head out. By now he’s made a habit of silently slipping into the woods like some wayward ghost.

What’s truly surprising is how he can beeline straight to where Akashi is, despite his normally horrendous sense of direction. He is halfway convinced it might be the sunflowers. He imagines them swaying in the afternoon breeze, unfurling their golden wings, which are sprinkled with what must surely be an otherworldly magic beckoning to Kuroko in the same manner they lure butterflies.

There’s also the possibility that—dawning on him as Kuroko is greeted with a pair of red eyes smiling at him when he makes it to the clearing—it might just be Akashi he keeps coming back for.

Why shouldn’t he, when he’s more than indebted to the mythical being now. Fact of the matter being that Akashi offered him kindness unsolicited, with a sense of suffocation it sinks in now the degree to which village rumors have skewed his image. He has been more helpful to the boy than the people who would curl their lips at his name, and that is what Kuroko wants the stories to focus on instead. Legends bred from good deeds inspire far greater things than misplaced fear does.

“Have you discovered yet how the blood of the sunflowers is made?” Akashi asks when the boy brings up the name in between his vows of gratitude.

Kuroko recalls with a downcast face all the endless toiling in hopes for squeezing out even a tiny, _miniscule_ drop of it to prove to his exhausted self the cure _did_ exist.

“There is a particular time you need to wait for, to see it form.” Akashi continues, sunrays caressing his face, adding a playful glimmer to his eye. “I predict it will take several days.”

The human blinks at him, weighing in his words, before a smile overtakes his chapped lips. “Then I suppose I don’t mind the wait.”

-

Sunflowers don’t have that memorable a scent, but sniffing at one brown yawning mouth yields no sort of smell at all. A notably odd quality when even fake flowers tend to remind the nose of vinyl and chewed up plastic.

The leafless tree on the other hand smells like something burnt amidst a bed roses. It’s the strongest when Kuroko rests his head on warm bark and closes his eyes and allows himself the rare pleasures of simply breathing for a while. He might just carve a line down wood-run wrinkles to see if the tree ends up wheezing scarlet petals.

“This tree has been here for a very long time.” Akashi’s voice rumbles through the bark, drawing Kuroko into a sweet-scented lull. It brings a laziness to crack even an eye open when the weight of Akashi’s shadow enveloping him feels all too pleasant.

“Longer than Akashi-kun?”

“I was born under this tree. On a spring filled with flowers.”

“When did it die?” murmurs Kuroko, drowsiness melting into the dregs of his voice.

“It is not quite dead—this tree simply loses its flowers the moment they bloom. Look, Kuroko.” Blue eyes squint open to follow Akashi’s outstretched claw. “These are its offspring.”

Today Kuroko learns that Akashi has shown him a bevy of magical things: beautiful glittering horns; flowers resurrecting; a cure Kuroko thought he would have to move heaven and earth to find.

And a tree that grows sunflowers.

Kuroko looks up at charcoal branches cradling a distant sun; they seem to be curling in on him in the manner of a mother cooing at a sleeping cradle, and the thought makes him smile softly. He dozes off for the rest of the afternoon, dreaming about a grey fuzzy shape and gentle hands rocking him to sleep.

The sky is splotched with yellow clouds by the time he wakes up. The forest hums underneath his fingers as tiny animals begin scuttling back to their homes. Kuroko prepares to head off as well, though he dreams much better here. He can’t tell if it’s the tree, or perhaps it is the tranquil companionship of the redhead who’s waving Kuroko goodbye while a blushing sun sets behind him, adorning his hair like a celestial crown.

Akashi shows him such magical sights.

-

It becomes a thing of the ordinary soon enough, the time they spend together growing longer and longer by the little details. A liaison under a peaking sun marked by Akashi’s stories, which eventually ebbs to a stillness lit with quiet smiles and halcyon amber skies.

Today is not much different, but perhaps it is the way Akashi tilts his head, perhaps it is the hush that fills the grove, subduing the sounds of the world with soft embers trailing the sun. And in this respect, perhaps Kuroko pretends this is a moment granted to them, like it belongs solely to the two of them. In this moment he pretends they are not that different from each other, he pretends to be brave and reaches out, with cold, timid fingers, to cup Akashi’s cheek.

The colors of the sunset must be splashed onto Kuroko’s own cheeks, because his body is a furnace kindling a soothing fire within. Akashi’s eyes widen slightly, and the prospect of catching him off-guard—for once—makes him that much more precious to Kuroko. Just a single touch unwinds a myriad of emotions the boy has never realized before. They tug at him until, slowly, so slowly, he is nearing his face to Akashi’s—and he breathes the air around him for just one heartbeat before he leans in to meet Akashi’s lips.

Sometimes the heart doesn’t know what it wants until you’ve actually tasted it. Felt its smooth texture on your lips, felt the wait of an eternity before Akashi finally kisses him back. Kuroko slants his mouth against the other’s, breathing hotly as they meet for a kiss again, again, and again.

Time stops for the human, and he finds that he does not mind writing a lifetime away with just this. With Akashi, feeling him on his fingertips, on his lips, on his skin where Akashi holds him, claws lightly grazing his spine. He shivers in the summer heat, pushing Akashi into the grass before diving in for another kiss.

Kuroko does not go home that night.

-

A light smell of spice wafts through the air when Kuroko dips in a ladle, and takes a sip of his vegetable soup. A hum of approval escapes as Kuroko smacks his lips at the taste. He goes back to chopping tomatoes, looking bright red and fresh with a deliciousness Kuroko can vouch for, after having grown them right behind his own house.

The growing clamor of a walking cane is soon followed by the frail form of his grandmother. She greets him with a warmth to her smile that Kuroko has certainly missed, he thinks, as he wishes her back good morning.

“Ah, I’ve been wanting to ask you if you would like to meet Akashi-kun today,” says Kuroko as he helps her to her seat. Surely she would love to meet the very reason she is able to even walk right now.

“Aka—you mean that _beast?_ ”

Kuroko hates how complete horror twists her face. Her mangled tone feels like a brutal slap to the face.

“Tetsuya, did you go into the forbidden woods?” she gasps, a visible pallor settling into her expression. Almost as if her sickness from before is about to rear its head again.

“Yes.” Kuroko suddenly feels like he’s speaking through a bed of nails hammered to his throat. “To look for medicine.”

“Oh no, no, _no_ —Tetsuya, promise me you will not go near the forest again.”

“Obaa-san, I can’t…”

Wrinkled hands grasp his in a failing grip. “Tetsuya, you must promise me.”

There’s a strong “no” jammed in his throat, but it closes up when Kuroko sees the panic in her eyes. Her fingers, weak and trembling in his own, refuse to let go. Clutching at him—maybe his life, in her eyes—so desperately.

There is a million things Kuroko wants to say right now, a million reasons to defend Akashi, but his emotions are sand pouring out of a crack in his lungs, dwindling down to one word.

“Yes,” he lies.

The conversation hangs in the air like smog, corroding Kuroko’s senses with an ashy sting of grey, the kind that marks gravestones. He forgets to feel the pain when he goes back to the knife and a finger ends up bleeding.

-

Breaking promises is the last thing Kuroko would normally do. Breaking relationships is even harder. He is not one to make wishes, always making do with what he has, but this time his prayers are more for Akashi’s sake. For all the slander the redhead gets, Kuroko receives from him the exact opposite of what the rumors have tried to warn about. People may as well be spewing barbs from their mouths as they curse him to hell, and Akashi would receive them as if they were humble gifts from a devotee.

That thought alone hurts Kuroko to an unsurmountable degree, yet nothing prepares him for the chaos erupting inside his heart when Aomine yanks him back, catching him on his usual boreal-bound route.

“How long have you been seeing that bastard?” Aomine growls.

Kuroko feels his mouth dry up, throwing a distressed look at the boy behind them. Kise, with his two-faced nature, decides now of all accursed times not to save his small friend from Aomine’s clutches. He merely watches from afar, shaking his head at Kuroko like some disappointed parent.

“I told you not to go near him, Tetsu.” The taller boy grits his teeth, like he’s holding back a punch he believes Kuroko deserves several hundreds of. Emotions—rare as they come to someone like Aomine—have always painted him feral that way. That was what had attracted Kuroko to the boy in the first place, but perhaps it falls on his own erroneous judgment to have not once anticipated ever taking the brunt of that raw, steaming anger himself.

Whatever is going through his friend’s mind, Kuroko certainly does not think he deserves it. “Aomine-kun, he’s different from the rumors—“

“I knew you’d never understand, Tetsu. You’re too nice for that.” A moment’s tenderness takes to Aomine’s tone, softening the corner of his eyes with an unfamiliar sadness. It might have even fooled Kuroko if it weren’t for that large hand almost crushing his wrist in a vice grip.

“I may not understand what you’re saying, Aomine-kun,” Kuroko admits, trying to shake off the taller boy. “But I know the truth, and I want you all to know as well.”

Too bad Aomine seems to have stopped listening to him ages ago, tugging his captive closer to him. “Sorry, Tetsu. I can’t let him near you.”

Kuroko’s patience snaps just then, going straight for a jab at Aomine’s ribs with his other hand. The victim curses in a pitch higher than usual as he doubles over in pain. “I will bring Akashi-kun to the village,” Kuroko declares, snatching his wrist back. “And you all will see that he’s a good person, Aomine-kun!” With that, he runs off; the other two hardly move an inch as they watch Kuroko’s small back be swallowed up by whispering groves.

With most of his anger dissolving with the sharp pain—on a different occasion, Aomine definitely would have marveled at Kuroko’s moves—he takes out the remnants on a different candidate. “Kise,” he grunts, “Why didn’t you stop him?”

“I think it’s time.” His golden gaze never once leaves the forest as he answers, like he’s the only one who can see Kuroko’s ghostly afterimage. “Akashicchi might be right, you know.”

“Dammit, Kise! He’s not supposed to remember.” Chunks of aging bark fly off the tree where it meets Aomine’s fist. “Akashi, that bastard, he tricked us all. Again.”

-

Legends tend to start with victories, with downfalls, with massacres—sometimes, the biggest ones with mistakes. It’s an entity of its own, shaping itself to the lips that propagate it, carrying every new word tacked onto it like beacons of interest. Nodes of information—often inaccurate, but not many liked to sweat the details back then—that focus the gaze away from the thin line of truth that connects them. Whenever a story is shared, the line fades away just by a little.

Soon, all we are left with is a jumbled cluster of bone-titillating words that convey neither lie nor truth, just a brand new legend sprouting from the sword or scepter of another.

Akashi Seijuurou’s legend, however, starts with his birth.

Born under a crooked tree that showers him with golden flakes, he blinks up at his first sky, which is draped in red and studded with a sea of moons. It seems to cry over his feeble form, and he’s catching a drop of it on his lips. Feline eyes blown wide with primal curiosity, he is a creature of instinct lapping up the scarlet drop like milk. And, just as the legends have dictated, a deep century-old hunger awakens once more.

Akashi’s life is a history inscribed in red, from the fine strands of his hair, to the alluring glint of rubies in his eyes, but ultimately to the red that drips from his claws.

_“…Akashi-kun?”_

Drop by drop, dripping over golden flowers.

“Tetsuya.”

Drop by drop, swallowed by engorged mouths vividly fringed by rings of golden petals.

“Do you know why it is called the _blood_ of the sunflower?”

Drop by drop, he drains a faceless human from its blood, letting his flowers feed on waning life. Once it slows down to a frozen trickle, he tosses the limp weight aside onto a growing pile with little effort. Taking a step forward, he turns to Kuroko, narrowing his eyes at the way the youth stands frozen still, imitating a statue of a human readying a scream.

“I see you’ve failed to remember.” He seizes Kuroko by the throat, if only to mute his scream. Because this is Kuroko, his fingers stay gentle, caressing the trembling lump in his neck. It is truly a pity, Akashi thinks.

He never should have let Kuroko out of the underworld.

Two taps of the heel cause the ground underneath to burst with a vibrant multitude of flowers entwining themselves around their bodies, pressing them closer. The sky flips over to reveal a fleshy underside, streaked with slimy red veins pulsating with a deafening heartbeat, which seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“Let us return home, Tetsuya.”

Akashi snakes a strong arm around his lover’s waist, who tumbles into his hold like a broken doll. While no one is watching, he lets his expression crumble, his face mapped with a world of guilt—and in the blink of an eye, that too disappears.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please play Undertale
> 
> merry christmas, everyone!


End file.
